Will Obama choose to be somebody or to do something?

Democratic Party opposition to this wealth creating opportunity is particularly laughable at a time when rhetoric swirls around daily about alleged growing income and wealth gaps.

Similarly, bad public schools are not a critical issue for wealthier families. More well to do neighborhoods have the best public schools. And families with the resources to do so can readily pull their kids out of a public school and send them to private schools.

But low-income families' kids are trapped in hopelessly failing inner city public schools. In addition to the obvious benefits that opening the market to competition would bring, important opportunities would open to address the special problems of these kids. A good portion of them come from broken homes and live daily in the deadly culture of nihilism that prevails in our inner cities. Why shouldn't these kids at least have a chance to go to a church school where they can get the traditional values they so need that are totally off limits in public schools?

Perversely, because these two big issues are not critical to many Republican voters, they have never been motivated to rally around important proposals of their own party. Low-income Democratic voters, who would most benefit, have been kept in the dark by their own leaders who have a stake in the statist status quo.

Senator Obama could change the political landscape. It's no secret that the Democratic victory last November was a vote against Republicans and had nothing to do with any positive Democratic agenda. Here's a real chance to help low-income folks, the country, and re-invent a Democratic Party bankrupt of ideas.

Might we have the audacity of hope that Obama might actually have the courage to show this kind of leadership?

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.